Counterfeiting and piracy of products is an ever increasing problem that affects not only the manufacturers of the products, but also consumers of the pirated products. For example, a copied product, such as a tool, may not have been manufactured to have quality that is equivalent to the product being copied. Therefore, the copied product may not be suitable for the purpose intended by the consumer. This may be further complicated when the consumer believes that the product is authentic, thereby giving the consumer a false impression of the quality of the manufacturer's goods. In another example, the product may be a copied version of software. However, because the software is not authentic, the software may be not be able to utilize all the functions which are available to authentic versions of the software, such as features which are included in the software itself, access to updates provided by the manufacturer for the software, and so on.
One technique which is utilized to limit product counterfeiting and piracy is the use of signatures. Signatures, for instance, may be generated utilizing a mathematical technique. To verify the signature, the signature is processed to identify whether a mathematical property is present in the signature. If so, the signature is generally considered valid. However, as the amount of computing resources available to consumers continues to increase, there is a corresponding need to develop improved techniques for generating and validating signatures such that the ever increasing availability of computer resources can not be utilized to “break” the signature.